Greg Abbott is a bitch but he's changed my queerness for the better
Someone should've paid me for this but I'm practicing.
My partner and I have this ritual: brush teeth, shower, skin care routine, sleep. The goal is to be in the shower by 9pm and it ends up being closer to 11 because of mind-controlling scrolling. Essentially, we are every American couple. This particular night was one where I remembered that we hadn’t had sex for days and my sex drive had been inconsistent for months. I thought to slip my fingers in her to show that I cared.
I moved them around & the popcorns decorating the ceiling turned into headlines - The new Texas COVID-19 surge could be worse than anything the state has seen yet, Gov. Greg Abbott says he’ll soon unveil plan to restrict transition-related medical care for transgender children. I hadn’t cried since March 2020 and my partner’s eyes were closed. What else are we supposed to do when our state is burning? This isn’t a piece that will answer that question, but this is a piece that will interrogate the smoke and ash.
I’ve been in Texas from the day I cracked my eyes open and plan to die here peacefully if the state doesn’t kill me first. I’ve been cognizant of the fact that I was queer and trans for at least the past 13 years. Before I knew “queer” I knew not to be one, not to be caught being “a girl that wanted to be a boy” unless you wanted the whole school to see you get called a “tranny” and then watch administrators do nothing about it. I knew the culture of Texas before it was written in a textbook for me, and though Greg Abbott and his goons would love it if all Texans were taught nothing about the levels of devils in this state they are erect through our concrete, our major highway, our failing grid system divorced from every other one because of money.
So let’s talk about erections.
If the pandemic has done nothing else, it has erected the truth of many folks’ gender and sexuality troubles that they’ve been unconsciously aware of for years. I’m on year 1.5 of this pandemic, and year 1.5 of having a new person in my life come out as nonbinary and my queerness dangling in my face like candy. When there is nobody & no social norm influencing your every move, who are you? Is a question that has cracked many a person’s perspective open like a piggy bank during this pandemic, even me. Sure, I am a Black queer nonbinary person and there is nothing I can do about that, but when I get up and have time with this body, how do I want it to feel? How do I want it to appear to my? What is gonna make me want this body?
So I started testosterone and had top surgery. And though I hate Greg Abbott’s COVID-infested guts, I’ve got him to thank for that.
Sure, this body will always have other people’s eyes on it. Sure, to some degree we have to care about how we are perceived (capitalism’s foot is on all our necks for now). Sure, it is difficult to make this body into a home when the rest of the world sees me as a ghost, but I gotta do something about these thoughts, this anxiety peering into my midnight intimacy, this time of ridiculousness in the state that I call home, right? If I’ve learned nothing else over the hellish extended March 2020-wake, I’ve leaed that queer is a verb, and I am a verb, too.
Contrary to popular belief, queerness in Texas isn’t all gay cowboy content (though I love this). It isn’t submissive & breedable memes (I love these too) or bragging rights for being the home of Beyoncé and Lizzo and UGK. Queerness is a radical act in a state constantly trying to un-radicalize us, to criminalize the elasticity of humanness and tell us that we ain’t nothing but a burden. It is resting when I’m supposed to, having amazing sex with my partner, replacing the images on the ceiling with actions to keep me and my chosen kin safe. It is pleasure — we all deserve and should have action to pleasure no matter what an un-business savvy OnlyFans has to say. It is calling my legislators and making the time to go to the wretched and truly cursed capitol and making time to prick my thigh every Wednesday at 8pm. Queer folks in Texas — me included— are more than what laws try to make of us, try to obscure in us.
The next morning, I woke up and didn’t check my phone. I rolled over onto my partner and took some time to give her everything I had at 9am without coffee and proper stretching. That is the Texas I want to live in constantly, the Texas inside her and me and everyone. We’ll get there.